


Late Nights

by pkmngame-fankids (Kataang36)



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 01:45:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12570936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kataang36/pseuds/pkmngame-fankids
Summary: After Team Flare is defeated by Serena and her friends, Hedvig finds herself repeatedly in a field at night, wondering what he meant by the questions and offers he gave her.





	Late Nights

The world had been saved. Team Flare was no longer a threat, and Lysandre was missing, presumed dead. There had been a few casualties, and those who had died were going to have a large funeral to honour them - unless they had been a member of Team Flare or their boss. Things were finally looking up.

Then why did she still feel like something was about to go wrong?

Unfortunately, she knew the answer to that question.

Quietly sighing, Hedvig raised her left arm towards the night sky, mapping out the constellations she had learnt as a child. Her right arm was resting her head against the grass she laid on. Her karate uniform, usually on her body and spotless, laid on her right side, stained from both the grass and from the blood of, mostly, strangers. Instead of her beloved karate uniform, she wore pale blue sweat pants and an old flannel shirt of hers. On her left side, her Holocaster - or what remained of it - rested on top of its protective case. In the distance, she could hear a group of Kricketunes begin their nightly concert for those who were lucky enough to hear it.

All seemed well in the world of Hedvig Montgomery, all except for a handful of details that most people would have missed. Her Holocaster, one of her prized possessions, was smashed into irreparable pieces, her karate uniform was stained, and, most importantly, her eyes, which normally were full of life, were now full of fear and uncertainty.

_“What would you give up for a beautiful world, little miss? Your happiness, your family, your emotions? Tell me, miss, and I can make it a reality.”_

Hedvig had never met Lysandre before. She had seen him when he made public appearances and speeches, and had always had the feeling that he was up to something - something big and terrifying, something that would change the world. It was one of the few times that she hated being right.

_“I can get rid of your flaws, your fears. Everything that you feel is wrong with you, it can all be gone in a blink of an eye, if you join me.”_

Something had been off about him though. He wasn’t acting the way he had been when he appeared publicly, and, according to what Serena had told her right after Team Flare was no longer a threat, he wasn’t acting like he had been when he was in Team Flare’s secret base or at Lysandre Labs. In fact, he had been acting desperate and nearly delusional when he had found her.

_“There must be_ something _you would get rid of for a better world. I can make you the best athlete in the world, and you only have to join me!”_

Hedvig closed her eyes and placed her left arm over her face. She could almost see his blodied, battered face in front of her again, his hand reaching out to her in desperate hopes of a deal. Somehow, he had found people who had helped him with his more major injuries, like his broken leg, and he had been leaning on crutches before he had extended his hand to her.

_“The moment I agree to anythin’ ya have to offer is the day the apocalypse happens. Get lost, Lysandre. This_ little miss _likes the world just how it is, flaws and all, and she likes herself just as much.”_

What  _would_  she have given up had she joined Lysandre?

Hedvig frowned slightly, lifted her left arm off of her face, and opened her eyes. The stars seemed duller than they had been before she had closed her eyes.

There wasn’t much she could have given to Lysandre, if she had joined him. She didn’t have any riches, she wasn’t influential, she wasn’t one of the strongest Pokémon Trainers, and she wasn’t the most levelheaded of people. The only things she had going for her were her honesty and her physical strength.

Nothing that the leader of Team Flare would want.

_“Team Flare will return. You and everyone else who aren’t apart of my team will die. This will be your final chance to join me.”_

* * *

Two weeks. It had been two weeks since Team Flare had been defeated, and two weeks since Lysandre had run into her.

And here she was again, lying on the grass, staring at the stars, questioning what Lysandre had meant when he had spoken to her.

_“I can make your life infinitely times better. Don’t you want that?”_

Didn’t she want a better life? No worries about her parents finding her, and her brothers could live with financial security. Things could be better for her, and for those that she cared about. Why didn’t she take the offer?

_“You and everyone else who aren’t apart of Team Flare will die.”_

Tracing the ground with her finger, Hedvig sighed. Perhaps it was her fears talking, but he had made a good point, now that she had had time to think it over. The world had too many problems - pollution, death, illnesses, hunger, and violence. Getting rid of the people who weren’t apart of Team Flare, the people who seemed more likely to cause the problems, might have actually solved some issues. But, at the same time, it might have only caused other issues. 

Killing countless people and Pokémon was not the answer to the world’s problems.

Then what was the solution? A sacrifice? If so, how big did this sacrifice have to be for people to realize just how bad the problems in the world were?

Unfortunately, she knew the answer to those questions, too. And those were answers that she didn’t want to accept. Not at the moment, anyway.

_“People are idiots, you know that. With me, we can build the perfect world. A beautiful world. What do you say?”_

Mass genocide. People would only learn through mass genocide, and even then, it could take years for others to realize the grave nature of what had happened. And if Team Flare had won that day two weeks ago, people would have learnt quickly and might have even tried to change the world. Was that what Lysandre had wanted to achieve?

_“No more pain, no more suffering. The world will be a beautiful place!”_

Hedvig let out an annoyed sigh. Since she had run into Lysandre two weeks back, she had been questioning him and his tactics. He had wanted to make the world a better place, so then why would he want to kill so many people and Pokémon? Wouldn’t that be doing the exact opposite of what to wanted to achieve?

_“We will use the ultimate weapon and wipe the slate clean.”_

He managed to terrify her, with one statement from before the ultimate weapon was unleashed on the world. She despised it when people threatened innocents, even when there were people that the world would have been better off without. The world, though, would never have been better, even if Team Flare had succeeded. Not with someone like Lysandre in charge.

She had the sinking feeling that if something or someone had screwed up, the world would have been worse when he found out about it.

Then, if she had that gut feeling, that fear of what could have happened - even though she would have been apart of the major amount of people who would have died - why did people join Lysandre? Wouldn’t people have figured that out for themselves as time went on? And, if they hadn’t figured it out, what would they have done when something  _eventually_   _did_  go wrong?

Growling lowly, Hedvig punched the ground. Along with hating people threatening innocent lives, she  _hated_  it when she begun to over think something that most people wouldn’t even consider. This time, though, she knew her questions were not off base, and that terrified her to no end.

Something would have gone wrong, even if Lysandre succeeded, and when it happened, what would become of that future?

_“A perfect world can be achieved.”_

* * *

It had been over a year since Hedvig had stumbled across an injured Lysandre, and she was at the same spot she had been when everything happened. Things had both changed and remained the same over the course of the year. With multiple sightings and reports of Lysandre, the whole world knew that he was alive and looking to create a new Team Flare. Serena was the Champion of Kalos, and was aiming to go for Hoenn Champion as well. Hedvig was able to support her brothers more than she had the year prior, but her brothers were still struggling financially.

The one thing that had appeared to stay the exact same, though, was how she returned to her field.

To be fair, the field wasn’t exactly  _hers_. She had no landownership over it. However, before she ran into Lysandre, it was her spot to go to when needed a break from something. The area just seemed to relax her more than other places she tended to hang out around, especially at night. The field was her hangout spot, her go-to relaxing place. 

That was until Lysandre and her had spoken the year before. Since then, excluding her visit that happened two weeks after that incident, she had been avoiding the place.

_“You and everyone else who aren’t apart of Team Flare will die.”_

Strangely, the authorities still hadn’t caught Lysandre. Nobody knew how the former Team Flare leader had evaded capture - and death, now that she thought about it - for over a year. There were some people who suspected that he was staying with somebody he trusted, a member of Team Flare perhaps, and it was why the authorities couldn’t find them. Malva had already had her house searched incase he had been staying there.

Malva had  _not_  been happy that day.

However, Hedvig had a feeling that she knew where Lysandre was. She had studied the areas of the reports and sightings of Lysandre, and had discovered that every single one was roughly around the same area. The authorities had noticed this, too, but they weren’t looking inside the circle that Lysandre seemed to like so much. They searched the towns that bordered her field, almost as if they thought that it was impossible for a man who was injured to survive out in the woods for an extended period of time.

Hedvig knew better, though. The former leader of Team Flare must have studied the land if he wanted to recreate the world. He had to have known what to expect if he had to live out in the wild. And he had applied that knowledge to when he had miraculously survived the ultimate weapon to live without anyone -or hardly anyone - finding him.

_“People are idiots, you know that.”_

She adjusted the strap of her backpack on her shoulder, walking around the field. In some spots, the grass was flattened, like someone had recently been standing, sitting, or laying there. In others, the grass was burnt to a crisp, leaving nothing but black ashes where the grass used to be. And the trees were burnt, too, leaving Hedvig with a bad taste in her mouth.

Nature, in her opinion, was to be respected, not to be destroyed.

She quickly checked over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching her, and then walked over to one of the burnt trees. Slowly, she placed her hand on the burnt bark, tracing her hand over the ash. It was soft, like she had suspected, but it wasn’t warm, which meant that the ash had been there for a long period of time.

She removed her hand from the ash on the tree and rubbed the remaining ash on her hand off. She walked away from the burnt tree and towards the area that was worse for wear - the destroyed grass.

_“We can build the perfect world. A beautiful world.”_

Hedvig frowned. She had already known that she wanted nothing to do with Lysandre or Team Flare, but if this was what he meant by a beautiful and perfect world, she  _really_  didn’t want anything to do with them. Destroying the world only to create a new one in its ashes - suddenly she understood how Team Flare got its name - was not something she would stand for, and it horrified her that there were people who agree with what he had planned.

She knelt down and ran her hand through the ashes that used to be grass. She suspected that Lysandre’s Pyroar had used multiple Fire type moves to have done this much damage to the normally damp grass, or maybe it had lost control of its attack. Or maybe… 

She glanced over her shoulder again, and then begun to walk backwards. She could see a shape beginning to take form - a shape that she had to be up in the air to see completely. She quickly searched for a tree that wasn’t burnt or destroyed, which proved to be surprisingly easy, and ran towards it, throwing her backpack onto the ground. Her heart was racing, but her mind was only focusing on the task at hand. If her instinct was right - if the shape was what she feared it was - she was going to need to find someone afterwards.

It was only when she climbed high enough into the tree when the branches became twigs did she look back down, and what she saw made her breath catch. She had been right.

There, burnt into the grass, was the symbol of Team Flare.

_“Team Flare will return.”_


End file.
